Sen. Grassley Highlights Kleinman Research on PES Bankruptcy

In a press release yesterday, Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) highlighted the Kleinman Center's four-part blog series exploring the reasons behind the Philadelphia Energy Solutions (PES) bankruptcy, as his staff released an internal memo concluding similar findings.

The Grassley staff memo found that the biofuels blending requirement and the cost of Renewable Identification Number credits (RINs), a compliance mechanism designed for flexibility, have little to do with the success of refineries and were not significant factors in the PES bankruptcy.

“After I heard that the Renewable Fuel Standard was being blamed for the financial troubles of some refineries, I wanted to know more. So I asked my staff to get to the bottom of the situation,” said Sen. Grassley, who referred to the research in Kleinman Center blog posts 1, 2, 3, and 4—authored by Christina Simeone.

Agreeing with our findings, the Grassley staff concluded that, “The publicly available evidence points to the fact that PES finds itself in financial difficulty due primarily to changes in its available feedstocks and other management decisions.”